The invention relates to automated industrial processes used in a large company. More particularly the invention relates to the automatic allocation of resources able to carry out a type of action in an industrial process.
In the present document, the term “industrial process” covers any process used in a company in order to carry out a given job necessitating the completion of several tasks. A process can be defined as a set of tasks organized as a system sequentially or in parallel, combining and implementing multiple resources of the company.
Each task can be defined as the transformation of one or more start-of-task objects into one or more end-of-task objects by carrying out one or more actions using one or more operational resources. A task can be carried out as soon as operational conditions are satisfied and subject to time and availability of the resources carrying out the task.
The breakdown of a process into tasks is recursive. Each task can itself be broken down into sub-tasks. The carrying out of a task broken down into sub-tasks itself constitutes a process. The breakdown of a task into sub-tasks can be stopped as soon as it is no longer possible or necessary to break down the task. In practice, processes are broken down into tasks and sub-tasks according to a degree of supervision of the process and according to the capabilities of action of the operational resource allocated to a task.
An industrial process can start on accepting an order and can comprise all of the intermediate tasks to be carried out by the company up to the delivery of the product, the delivery constituting the last task of the process. The product provided by the company depends on the sector of activity of the company and can correspond to a physical product but also to a provision of service. The implementation of an industrial process also calls upon various operational resources of the company.
The term “operational resource” must be understood to mean an element of the company having an active role in a process, that is to say able to carry out at least one action during at least one task of a process. In the present document, a resource can be of different nature according to the types of task and of action to be carried out. A production site is an operational resource capable of producing different types of products. However, within this production site, a production team, a production line, or even a robot constitute separate operational resources able to carry out more limited manufacturing actions. An intervention team is an operational resource intended to intervene for certain types of actions (fault repair, maintenance or other service action) to be carried out in a given geographic zone.
Information technology is allowing companies to increasingly automate the running of an industrial process. This is because a client can place an order online through the Internet. The order can then be processed automatically by a server which controls the industrial process relating to the products ordered by sending to various resources of the company action instructions to be carried out. According to the various possible configurations, a single server can supervise all of a process, or the process is managed successively by the various resources used.
Without using completely automated industrial resources, companies also use computer assistance for managing processes when a participant of the company cannot know the whole of the data of a company. This is particularly the case of large companies which have a wide geographic presence and a wide range of clients, products and/or resources.
However the process is managed, this management calls upon databases. A database contains information relating to a category of physical objects. The totality of the information relating to a physical object commonly corresponds to a computer object. A computer object is a set of information structured according to an object type. The object type is determined according to information relating to the physical objects that are wished to be described in the database. A database is a set of computer objects defined according to an object type. An object type currently comprises characteristics belonging to physical objects and information relating to the processing carried out on said physical objects.
Thus, for a file of clients to whom service provisions are offered, the database comprises an object associated with each client. The structure of each object comprises, on the one hand, information specific to the client and, on the other hand, information specific to the resources responsible for the various services for that client. Thus, when an order is accepted, the interrogation of the database makes it possible to allocate a resource of the company for a requested service according to the properties relating to the client.
In the case of a catalog of physical products, a products file is a database which comprises objects representative of the products. Each object comprises information specific to the product and information indicating for each product or for each category of products the resource or resources of the company used in the processing carried out on the product.
In general, for a given category of physical objects, there is a database which comprises computer objects representative of the physical objects. Each computer object comprises information specific to each physical object and information relating to the processing of each physical object. Thus, during the running of a process, the interrogation of the database makes it possible, for an action or a task to be carried out, to know which resource is concerned.
Such a database structure raises a problem of keeping databases updated. When a company is reorganized, the latter modifies the distribution and activity of its resources. It is then necessary to review the integrality of the databases in order to modify all of the information relating to the allocation of resources. Large companies are reorganized regularly in order to optimize their operational functioning; the non-operational costs generated by operations of this kind are large.
Moreover, each company adapts the structure of its databases according to its needs. The fusion of two companies adds to the problems of reconciliation of the intrinsic properties of the databases of the companies concerned a problem to be solved relating to the static reallocation of resources in order to link them with the objects of the databases concerned.